HURRICANE Florence will pound the Carolina coast with a ‘Mike Tyson punch’ and not just a ‘glancing blow’, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has warned.

The tropical storm, barreling across the Atlantic Ocean towards the East Coast of the US, weakened slightly to a Category 3 storm on a scale of 5 but still had maximum sustained wind speeds of 125mph as of 6pm (BST).

The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said its trajectory continues to show that the centre of Hurricane Florence will most likely strike the southern coast of North Carolina by late Thursday or early Friday.

Updated forecasts from the NHC show the storm lingering near the coast of the Carolinas, packed with days of torrential rain that could trigger huge inland flooding from South Carolina to Virginia.

It has forecasted that parts of North Carolina could receive as much as up to one metre (40 inches)of rain.